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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835057">the bidding</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenors_only_gang/pseuds/Tenors_only_gang'>Tenors_only_gang</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Possession, abuse but like its schlatt and quackity, basically a chara study about the possession, no slash god bless you all</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:15:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,970</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835057</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenors_only_gang/pseuds/Tenors_only_gang</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Quackity’s slow descent into becoming a passenger in his own body.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alexis | Quackity &amp; Jschlatt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>95</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the bidding</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Clasping and unclasping his hands, Quackity sneers a smile that isn’t his, laughs in a voice that hurts his throat, and straightens a tie that stifles his neck.</p><p>
  <i>Schlatt’s funeral had started so well.</i>
</p><p>Admittedly, interrupting the service at every possible moment was a bit much. Pissing on Schlatt’s portrait, screaming cheers of celebration, all of it feels <i>so incredibly stupid</i> in retrospect. They say that hindsight is 20/20, but they certainly neglect the nasty headache that comes with it too.</p><p>Of course, the latter is more likely the byproduct of the constant screaming laughter behind his eyes, the biting words of the dominating force of a dictator whom Quackity had jinxed the defeat of.</p><p>It felt ridiculous as he did it, but in the adrenal rush, Quackity thought it was only a little odd, at most, as he reached into the chest of Schlatt’s few remains and plucked out his heart, eating it behind the podium in Schlatt’s open tomb.</p><p>Instead, immediately following the action, searing pain burned in his face, and all he saw was red. </p><p>
  <i>This isn’t fuckin’ fair and you know it. You were next.</i>
</p><p>“The motherfucker’s dead!” Quackity continued to laugh with his friends, just a bit less enthusiastic as he tried to will away the intrusive thoughts.</p><p>
  <i>The president’s dead. He’s dead––the fuckin’ arc is over. Where the fuck’s that leave you?</i>
</p><p>Not ten minutes later, Quackity dove into the water beside the tomb, both to retrieve Schlatt’s discarded bones and to calm the violent pain.</p><p>
  <i>You said it yourself, you even fuckin’ told Tommy! Line of fucking succession! You were supposed to be next. Not him, and certainly not Tubbo. You got more votes than Schlatt, than Coconut––and with Wilbur out of the way, it should’ve been you.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>It should be you.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>It can be.</i>
</p><p>The voice is familiar, and it isn’t entirely his––but all the same, Quackity clings to it. It seems to know what it's talking about, so sure of itself, so secure, and commands respect: respect Quackity is all but conditioned to give, trained to respond with a simple, peppy, <i>’yessir’</i>.</p><p>It takes a mere few hours, but after the glossy new varnish begins to wear, Quackity’s enthusiasm to serve dulls quickly. </p><p><i>Flatty Patty,</i> the voice likes to mutter, and Quackity remembers, bitterly, just how much of a joke he is.</p><p>
  <i>No one takes him seriously, no one, not the voice inside of his head, not himself, and not his “friends” in the world outside. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>His authority will never be an option.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>If Tommy is cursed to never be president, Quackity is never to be so much as heard.</i>
</p><p>When the ghost of Wilbur stands before him, practically shoving a guitar into his arms and handing him the lyrics to the new anthem of L’Manburg, he feels a sore fondness rise in his heart. </p><p>He isn’t sure if the bitterness that wells up with it belongs to himself or the voice inside of his head, but the noise that pulls from his throat to sing sounds too rough to be his own, and too fond to be spiteful.</p><p><i>Flatty Patty,</i> the voice mutters, as Quackity awakes by the roadside a few hours later, rolling his eyes to find that he’d died again. His belongings are splattered over the grass beside the wooden path pulling into Manburg.</p><p>Quackity is too tired to argue, to give this voice further fodder, allow it to know just how offensive he finds the words, a reduction of his character to a trait he’d once jokingly glorified.</p><p><i>I couldn't even play a fuckin’ clown right</i>, he’d likely find himself thinking just a few weeks ago. Instead, he just stares at his hands.</p><p>--</p><p>Sometimes the voice is violent. Quackity doesn’t want to think about the implications for his nervous system, or the intent of the spirit, and so instead he attributes the constant headaches  and stomach pain to food poisoning. </p><p>His heart beats irregularly, often fluttering much too slowly for comfort, and yet he shakes and paces quickly as he sweats bullets. If he is to describe the feeling to himself—–honestly that is, a complete admittance of the problem at hand–– he’d say his heart stretches over itself, trying to accommodate another within its walls, thick and leathery and uncomfortable.</p><p>Growing pains.</p><p>His chest burns, and he gasps for air even as he walks short distances. Swimming, while something he once preferred to crossing the wooden paths through his country, is now nearly impossible.</p><p>Quackity tries not to think of his president as he sinks like a stone, about having to pull him from the freezing water.</p><p>Things haven’t changed much, he supposes. </p><p>Even when he was the vice president, he made room for a thousand different interests in his heart, all for Manburg, all for the vision of a country he wanted to deny the rust and decay of as it happened before his very eyes. He made room for Schlatt, a superior who showered him with an awful mix of praise and degradation until he no longer knew what was real and what was fake. For Tubbo, a boy much too young, who he jealously eyed for his seemingly positive relationship with Schlatt––Jesus fucking Christ, how wrong he’d been about that one. Even George to some extent, who despite almost constantly slacking off and not receiving scorn for doing such, has an admittedly decent sense of humor.</p><p>He made room in his heart for a country that he was quite literally not supposed to be allowed inside of, continental origin from a life long before his own barring him from citizenship even during his initial run for office. He made room for the suffering that came with it, piles of paperwork that Tubbo was excused from and George was too lazy to complete, the verbal and physical abuse from Schlatt, the pressure from every direction to do a thousand ‘right things’ that were all wrong.</p><p>He supposes that this is the natural next step. Everything always stays the same, and this is simply the direction of entropy, something far beyond his control.</p><p>Even Dream likely can’t end the horrible cycle of chaos, even if he wanted to.</p><p>And, with all of the room he’s made in his heart for his country, for the people he would rather die than let down, why shouldn’t he be the president? When Tubbo didn’t even run, and every other candidate was clearly unfit, why is he still an afterthought? </p><p>He doesn’t have the energy to decide what thoughts belong to him and what don’t. He isn’t naïve, isn’t blind to his own manipulation, and yet finds it hard to care.</p><p>--</p><p>With the newfound company, Quackity finds himself just as sleep deprived as when he’d served under Schlatt. Falling asleep is obviously difficult, with every miss-step and criticism shouted throughout the day amplified like the wailing of a blaring siren.</p><p>His new normal is to take what he can get: a fitful hour here, a fitful hour there, usually amounting to hours spent tossing and turning, clutching at his ears uselessly, and measly scraps of non-consecutive sleep.</p><p>He’s conscious of how it makes him more pliant, more docile, but finds himself too exhausted to care as he swallows the voice further into him, and he finds himself just as dedicated to his superior’s whims as he once was.</p><p>Rage and apathy course through him in tandem, melding until he isn’t sure what belongs to him and what doesn’t. Agitation, because his head hurts, and no one takes him seriously, and he deserves the presidency, and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and he wants to be alone, and he wants to wring someone’s neck, and he doesn’t want to be alone anymore. And yet too fatigued to feel it in full, overwhelmed and confused, both starved of and overstimulated with interaction. He experiences emotions like they are made of sound, like he is underwater.</p><p>The greatest gift to come with sleep is silence. At first, it’s akin to dreamless––darkness around him as he floats, suspended in a thick pool of nothing. After a few nights, his subconscious shifts: Quackity, lying in a soft, grassy, clearing as the sun gently warms his face, full, feathered, golden wings comfortably folded under his back. Some nights, he flutters them, experimentally, lifting himself towards the boundless sky. In the distance, the crater where Manburg should be pools with water, reclaimed by the marina the nation was built on. He’s free.</p><p>The consistent, blissful silence is what moves Quackity to tears as he awakes, immediately greeted by a laughing, condescending voice. </p><p>
  <i>Aww, are you fuckin’ cryin’ about it? Is that what this is? Is it Quackity’s crying o’clock again?</i>
</p><p>“No.”</p><p>He finds himself speaking aloud more nowadays, to no one in particular as he heads his daily tasks. Doesn’t acknowledge it when he’s caught, when he’s screwing around with Karl or Sapnap or George or Connor, and tries to act like he isn’t constantly drained by social interaction, because as far as he wants to believe he’s alone in his head and body.</p><p>And he bites back guilt, or rather, whatever guilt-adjacent emotion he can bring himself to muster, when he wishes ill of Tommy, of Tubbo.</p><p><i>They’re kids, none of this is their fucking fault</i>, he says to himself, and with some hesitation continues,<i>it’s also not my fault that Tubbo has no fuckin’ experience and put Tommy in power because he’s his brother, and I have fucking no one and never have.</i></p><p><i>You have me</i>, the voice sometimes echoes sweetly, and Quackity clasps his hands together, one significantly colder than the other.</p><p>Sleep as fitful as his doesn’t restore much, as soon, the headache returns.</p><p>And even pleasant dreams were a temporary blessing. A week and two days into the cohabitation, Quackity awakes, with burning lungs, on the floor of his White House. He jolts upright, and his waking exhaustion follows him. </p><p>Schlatt sits behind a desk, tapping his foot, annoyed sneer on his lips as he stares down into his watch.</p><p>“Schlatt?” Quackity asks, the question a barely audible mumble as he self-consciously adjusts his beanie.</p><p>“Quackity.”</p><p>The former-president’s voice is honeyed, startlingly sober, and a chill runs down Quackity’s spine. </p><p>“The fuck’s takin’ you so long, huh? It’s been It’s been over a week and you’ve got jack fucking shit to show for it.”</p><p>Quackity would straighten if he could, but his eyelids droop and his back aches, and he barely flinches as Schlatt stands from behind his desk to step closer. </p><p>“‘M sorry sir.”</p><p>“You’re sorry? I hope you’re fuckin’ sorry! Who’s in charge here, huh? Who’s in fuckin’ charge?”</p><p>Quackity hesitates, “You, Schlatt.”</p><p>“So why the <i>fuck</i> are you dicking around? Every day, fuckin’ Tubbo runs around ruining Manburg. He even got Wilbur––I don’t even know how the fuck he did it––he got Wilbur on his side. You’re not gonna fuck me this time, <i>Alex</i>, you understand that?”</p><p>“Yes, Schlatt.”</p><p>How foolish Quackity was to believe that any of this could be about <i>him</i>, what <i>he</i> deserves. This world wasn’t built for him to play the main character. It was designed for others, and for him to serve those others without question.</p><p>The only thing more foolish is that Quackity allows himself to believe he’ll wake to the silence he was deprived of in sleep, as if it were ever promised to him in the first place.</p><p>Quackity instead wakes to harsh, guttural, laughter.</p><p>Well beyond the point of tears, instead of giving in to the teasing lilt in the voice’s tone, Quackity does the next best thing.</p><p>He slips into a suit, straightening a tie that squeezes uncomfortably at his neck.</p><p>He laughs in a voice that isn’t his.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>yet another lyric title from my quackity playlist listen to it here:<br/>https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4krkw1YcEK3HRjVxYC8fAi?si=bD2KnveSST-KKMcIYipTRQ</p><p>anyways not the psych student analyzing quackity’s role play character on the dream smp!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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